Storm Born by Richelle Mead

Eugenie Markham is an extremely powerful Shaman specializing in banishments, and lately, she's been having all the jobs she can handle and then some. But the worst part about the new jobs is that the spirits she's been banishing know her name. Her real name, and not just the alias she uses among spirits of the otherworld, Odile, the main character from Swan Lake.

And it's not just that the spirits know her name, even though she has been very careful not to let her true name out where the spirits can hear it, it's that they generally don't want to kill her, but instead, to mate with her. Why, she has no idea, but it unnerves her so much that she decides to approach her stepfather, Roland, who is also a Shaman and taught her everything she knows for ideas. Unfortunately, he isn't as much help as she wants him to be.

She's gotten an offer for another job, a man's sister snatched away by fairies, or as Eugenie calls them, the Gentry, since to them "fairies" is a derogatory term. To retrieve Jasmine, she'll have to travel to the other realm, and not just in spirit form, but with her entire body, upping the penalty should something happen to her in the other realm. She decides to take the case, and calls on help from her spirit helpers, but in the meantime, she meets a red-haired Vet named Kyotaka Sanchez, and spends the evening with him. Together, they fight off an ice elemental possessed by the spirit of a gentry, but in doing so, she realizes that he isn't completely human, and he's marked her with wounds that won't fade.

Warier now than before, she takes one of the spirits advice and calls on the aid of Dorian, the Oak King. Dorian hates Aeson, the King who snatched away Jasmine, and would give aid to Eugenie just for the priviledge of thwarting Aeson's schemes. When she goes to him for aid, and calls on his hospitality, he gives her both, and an added truth: that she is the daughter of a man who nearly ruled the realm of the Gentry, the Storm King, and that is why so many Gentry want to bed her. The first son she bears is destined to destroy the human world, and many Gentry wish to be the man who fathers that son.

Eugenie's attempt to get Jasmine back fails, but she manages to call up a storm to free herself from Aeson's grasp when he captures her. She later returns to Dorian for aid on controlling her magic, and he begins to teach her, in return for one night with her at a future time. As half-Gentry, Eugenie can call on the Storm King's powers, but she has never been trained to use them, only her shamanic powers, which call on very different sources and powers. But can Eugenie master enough control to gain powers over the storm, and keep herself from killing others, in time to retrieve Jasmine from Aeson? And by then, will Jasmine want to return home?

Well, characters of Eugenie's type are a dime a dozen in Supernatural fiction, the strong woman who doesn't like to accept help from anyone, kicks twelve times her weight in monster butts and has lots of hot supernatural sex with men who aren't quite human, or often not human at all. I see this heroine everywhere I go these days, from the Ur-example of Anita Blake and so on and so forth. There isn't really all that much different in Eugenie, even the "new powers" bit that she finds herself having, and that Eugenie is at home on the battlefield, but put her in a party where she has to make nice, and she's out of her depth, nervous and afraid.

On the other hand, that being said, I did like Eugenie, even if she seemed a slightly different carbon copy from other characters I had read before. I like her, but there isn't all that much to set her apart from other, very similar characters that I have read before. Okay, she's a little better at accepting help, and a lot better at protecting her virtue, but what really set the book apart was the ending, and how much her situation is changed by it. I really hope that we can see more of Eugenie and how she will operate in the future, even if she comes off as Anita Blade with dashes of Dante Valentine.

And yet, while she's all of that, she's a bit more, too. A warrior, a mercenary, and a highly passionate woman who doesn't know who she can trust and how her parentage sets her apart. This book also sets her apart by giving her a half-sister. Eugenie thinks she can deal with the prophecy by simply not having a child, or aborting it if she does get pregnant. But her half-sister has chosen the Gentry over humans and has no such compunctions about preventing the death of the human world through any son she may bear. Setting up this conflict is part of why I am looking forward to a sequel so much.